# Semantic Segmentation with Generative Models: Semi-Supervised Learning and Strong Out-of-Domain Generalization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.05833 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05833/

## Key facts

- Cited by 141 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 83 of its 112 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Apr 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 83)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04948/) (2018)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Bootstrap your own latent: A new approach to self-supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07733/) (2020)
- [Analyzing and Improving the Image Quality of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04958/) (2019)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [Progressive Growing of GANs for Improved Quality, Stability, and Variation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10196/) (2017)
- [Improved Techniques for Training GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03498/) (2016)
- [Rethinking Atrous Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05587/) (2017)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning by Predicting Image Rotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.07728/) (2018)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Representations by Solving Jigsaw Puzzles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09246/) (2016)
- [Big Self-Supervised Models are Strong Semi-Supervised Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10029/) (2020)
- [Semantic Image Synthesis with Spatially-Adaptive Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07291/) (2019)
- [Training Generative Adversarial Networks with Limited Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06676/) (2020)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis and Semantic Manipulation with Conditional GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11585/) (2017)
- [Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning by Context Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.05192/) (2015)
- [Unsupervised Data Augmentation for Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12848/) (2019)
- [Temporal Ensembling for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02242/) (2016)
- [Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05711/) (2020)
- [ChestX-ray8: Hospital-scale Chest X-ray Database and Benchmarks on Weakly-Supervised Classification and Localization of Common Thorax Diseases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.02315/) (2017)
- [Virtual Adversarial Training: A Regularization Method for Supervised and Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03976/) (2017)
- [Self-Supervised Learning of Pretext-Invariant Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01991/) (2019)
- [On the Variance of the Adaptive Learning Rate and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.03265/) (2019)
- [Encoding in Style: a StyleGAN Encoder for Image-to-Image Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.00951/) (2020)
- [Which Training Methods for GANs do actually Converge?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04406/) (2018)
- [Image2StyleGAN: How to Embed Images Into the StyleGAN Latent Space?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03189/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 141)

- [Score-based Generative Modeling in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05931/) (2021)
- [Label-Efficient Semantic Segmentation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03126/) (2021)
- [GET3D: A Generative Model of High Quality 3D Textured Shapes Learned from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11163/) (2022)
- [Synthetic Data from Diffusion Models Improves ImageNet Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08466/) (2023)
- [Your Diffusion Model is Secretly a Zero-Shot Classifier](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16203/) (2023)
- [DatasetGAN: Efficient Labeled Data Factory with Minimal Human Effort](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06490/) (2021)
- [EditGAN: High-Precision Semantic Image Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.03186/) (2021)
- [DDP: Diffusion Model for Dense Visual Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17559/) (2023)
- [EcoTTA: Memory-Efficient Continual Test-time Adaptation via Self-distilled Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01904/) (2023)
- [BigDatasetGAN: Synthesizing ImageNet with Pixel-wise Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.04684/) (2022)
- [Poisson Flow Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11178/) (2022)
- [Learning to See by Looking at Noise](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05963/) (2021)
- [Synthesizing Informative Training Samples with GAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07513/) (2022)
- [SemanticStyleGAN: Learning Compositional Generative Priors for Controllable Image Synthesis and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02236/) (2021)
- [Semi-supervised Semantic Segmentation with Error Localization Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02078/) (2022)
- [Generative Models: What Do They Know? Do They Know Things? Let's Find Out!](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17137/) (2023)
- [Learning Disentangled Representations in the Imaging Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.12043/) (2021)
- [StyleGAN knows Normal, Depth, Albedo, and More](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00987/) (2023)
- [EmerDiff: Emerging Pixel-level Semantic Knowledge in Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.11739/) (2024)
- [MedSyn: Text-guided Anatomy-aware Synthesis of High-Fidelity 3D CT Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03559/) (2023)
- [SatSynth: Augmenting Image-Mask Pairs through Diffusion Models for Aerial Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16605/) (2024)
- [DreamTeacher: Pretraining Image Backbones with Deep Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07487/) (2023)
- [State-of-the-Art in the Architecture, Methods and Applications of StyleGAN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.14020/) (2022)
- [Measuring axiomatic soundness of counterfactual image models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01274/) (2023)
- [DL4SciVis: A State-of-the-Art Survey on Deep Learning for Scientific Visualization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06504/) (2022)
- [Generative Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11316/) (2023)
- [Neuron Structure Modeling for Generalizable Remote Physiological Measurement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05955/) (2023)
- [Directional Connectivity-based Segmentation of Medical Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00145/) (2023)
- [LD-ZNet: A Latent Diffusion Approach for Text-Based Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12343/) (2023)
- [Semantic Ray: Learning a Generalizable Semantic Field with Cross-Reprojection Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13014/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Training deep networks with limited labeled data while achieving a strong generalization ability is key in the quest to reduce human annotation efforts. This is the goal of semi-supervised learning, which exploits more widely available unlabeled data to complement small labeled data sets. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for discriminative pixel-level tasks using a generative model of both images and labels. Concretely, we learn a generative adversarial network that captures the joint image-label distribution and is trained efficiently using a large set of unlabeled images supplemented with only few labeled ones. We build our architecture on top of StyleGAN2, augmented with a label synthesis branch. Image labeling at test time is achieved by first embedding the target image into the joint latent space via an encoder network and test-time optimization, and then generating the label from the inferred embedding. We evaluate our approach in two important domains: medical image segmentation and part-based face segmentation. We demonstrate strong in-domain performance compared to several baselines, and are the first to showcase extreme out-of-domain generalization, such as transferring from CT to MRI in medical imaging, and photographs of real faces to paintings, sculptures, and even cartoons and animal faces. Project Page: urlhttps://nv-tlabs.github.io/semanticGAN/